


The Lives of the Heart

by Mires (krisalis)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Collection of Vignettes, Deleted Scenes, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, POV Alternating, Physical Abuse, Pre-Canon, Ronan POV, Slightly Jossed in places, Suicide Attempt, Written Before BLLB, adam pov, mostly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 22:05:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krisalis/pseuds/Mires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignettes of Adam and Ronan, running from pre-series through the future in no particular order.</p><p>Or, should you prefer an actual summary: </p><p>Adam is tired of being tired. Ronan stops pretending. Gansey and Ronan are out of orange juice. Ronan isn't sorry. Adam adjusts to life after Gansey. Ronan doesn't ask. Adam gets a 2am phone call. Ronan is ashamed, resentful, afraid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heart Starting and Stopping in the Late Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to those who've read and enjoyed! I'm already writing more as I process Blue Lily, Lily Blue, but have decided to leave this collection as is and mark it complete. There are a couple of events/premises in here that have been Jossed by BLLB, but on the whole it remains canon compliant.
> 
> Fic and chapter titles as well as epigraph are from _The Lives of the Heart_ , a quietly beautiful volume of poetry by Jane Hirshfield.

**_"Each of them opens and closes, closes and opens_ **   
**_the heavy gate--violent, serene, consenting, suffering it all."_**

_-Jane Hirshfield, "The Lives of the Heart"_

 

When Adam wheeled his bike up to St. Agnes, it was pushing eleven o’clock and he was desperately tired. He’d just completed a shift at the trailer factory, finishing off yet another painfully long day. (He was beginning to wonder if there was any other kind.)  

As he went to chain his bike in the stairwell, he heard a small noise from the nave of the church -- something like a groan. The noise sparked immediate recognition, followed closely by exasperation. Adam sighed.

It was possible that he was wrong. Possible that the noise was really just the creakings of the ancient building. Possible that the source was someone Adam didn’t know, that the cause was something other than it had been any other time this happened.

But it was much more likely that the source was Ronan Lynch, and the cause was another bout of drunkenness and regret. The combination had landed Ronan in the pews of St. Agnes before, and Adam was certain it wouldn’t be the last time.

He entered the darkened church, scanning for Ronan’s form among the wooden rows. He found it three rows in on the lefthand side of the aisle, lying flat on a pew. Ronan was motionless. One arm was draped over his face. Gritting his teeth, Adam administered a sharp poke to his ribs, and was greeted with another groan and a whiff of Ronan’s stale beer breath.

“You smell terrible,” Adam said. He didn't bother to keep the distaste from his voice. Until he met Ronan, Adam had associated the smell of alcohol with only two things: his father, and pain forthcoming. This was the main reason Adam never drank. The other reason was that Adam couldn't afford to waste any spare time or energy on depressants. Add those to the list of luxuries Ronan took for granted and Adam never had.

Ronan slurred something unintelligible. He’d clearly started drinking hours ago, and was as inebriated as Adam had ever seen him. Adam let out a long sigh, took a moment to visualize dismantling the irritation that prickled through him. Then he grasped Ronan by the arm and pulled.

“Come on. You’re obviously too wasted to drive.” 

Getting Ronan up the stairs to his small room was not an easy task. More than once, they had to stop so that Ronan could lean against the wall and Adam could exorcise the impulse to push him over the railing and be done with it. When they finally reached Adam’s room, he guided Ronan to the floor, not bothering to soften the impact any more than necessary to keep him from breaking anything essential. Ronan responded with a muddled string of profanity, though the words lacked conviction. 

“Whatever, Lynch. Don’t puke on my floor.” Another wave of exhaustion hit Adam. He resented the unanticipated extra effort of hauling Ronan up to the room. He resented the reek of alcohol. He resented everything that Ronan had and Adam didn’t.

His skin itched with dried sweat. He hated the feeling, but right now he hated being awake even more.

Adam gave up. He collapsed on his rigid mattress, not bothering to change out of his work clothes or turn off the small plastic lamp glowing in the corner.

“Why do you drink like that, anyway?” Adam spoke without really thinking about it. Even after the words left of his mouth he didn’t expect a response, not considering the state Ronan was in.

So it was a surprise to hear rustling as Ronan clumsily shifted to face the mattress. Adam looked down at him from his vantage point.

“It helps,” Ronan said slowly. Enunciating each word seemed to require significant effort. “With the dreams. Makes ‘em easier to…” he trailed off for a moment. “I don’t know.”

For a few seconds, Adam stared at Ronan’s unfocused eyes. He felt his resentment ebb slightly, though it didn’t go away entirely.

“Okay,” was all he said. 

Then he rolled onto his back and almost immediately drifted off to sleep.

In the morning when he awoke, Adam worried for a brief second that he was seeing things again. The entire floor of the room, along with Ronan’s still-inert body, was littered with cherry blossoms. Adam sat up slowly, the realization dawning on him that these were dream flowers.

_It helps with the dreams._

He supposed this was an improvement on blood and horrifying winged creatures.

When Ronan regained feeling in his limbs, he flicked a blossom at Adam.

"Don't say I never got you anything nice, Parrish."


	2. Heart Pressing Further

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: canon-typical references to physical abuse.

The cuts and bruises don’t rouse suspicion at first. 

At first, Ronan and Gansey are willing to swallow Adam’s brush-offs, his vague references to his various blue collar jobs. The believability of the excuses starts to stretch a little thin the first day Adam allows them to pick him up at his house and they witness Robert Parrish bursting out of the trailer in top form, screaming obscenities.

But the day when they stop pretending is when Adam shows up with a swollen lip and a nasty laceration bisecting his jawline, a black eye rapidly darkening one side of his face. 

Though the injury is more severe than any they've seen on Adam so far, Ronan doesn't make the connection right away. He's too busy being shocked and -- to be entirely honest -- a little impressed. Though it seemed unlikely he had emerged the victor, Adam couldn't have gotten those injuries from anything other than a fight. Who knew he had it in him?

“Ho-ly  _shit_ , Parrish," Ronan says reflexively. "What happened to your face?"

A touch of glee colors his voice; he is thinking of the bruise yellowing on his own cheekbone from his latest encounter with Declan.

"Don't be an asshole," Adam mutters, looking away.

 Ronan can't help himself.

"You want boxing lessons? You could clearly use some tips, man."

The enthusiasm drains abruptly when Ronan notices a dark bruise with clearly delineated fingers wrapped around Adam's arm, playing hide and seek with his sleeve. Something about the mark doesn't quite match up, and Ronan thinks of Robert Parrish's angry red face.

But he's already said the wrong thing, and he can't figure out how to roll it back. Adam's voice somehow manages to sound exhausted in addition to pissed off.

"Fuck off, Lynch."

That isn't the end of the conversation, not by a long shot, but by then Gansey has caught up and he launches into a series of questions, suggestions and offers of help. Though Adam's stoicism will leave room for none of these things, Ronan lets Gansey take over. He's already done enough damage.

Months and months pass before Ronan offers again.

This time, Adam slinks into Monmouth wearing a nasty red scrape on his chin and doing his level best to camouflage a limp. 

The sight of Adam moving jerkily across the floor, a pained expression flashing over his features when he settles himself carefully into the armchair, freezes Ronan in the doorway to his room. He stares openly.

“Goddamn," is all he says.

"It's fine, Ronan. Leave it alone," Adam responds, already defensive.

“Fucking hell, Parrish. Let me teach you how to throw a punch.”

"Leave it alone," Adam repeats.

“You can’t keep going around looking like that, man. I mean, the teachers all have shit for brains but nobody’s stupid enough to believe your same excuses forever.”

Adam says nothing, and Ronan feels a surge of irritation.

"Fucking _fight back_ ," he says, insistent.

Adam just shakes his head, looks at the wall. Ronan can see him withdrawing, shipping his brain off to some other reality. The irritation multiplies. Ronan retreats into his room, slamming the door behind him.

Now, a few weeks later, Ronan sits in the BMW with Adam and fidgets ceaselessly. He can't eradicate the image of Whelk putting a gun to Gansey’s head from his mind.

He's sick of watching things go to shit before his very eyes, unable to do anything about it but react to what's already happened.

Adam thanks him again for the ride, voice already oddly distant, and steps out of the BMW.

“No problem, man. See you tomorrow," Ronan says.

He thinks, _What the fuck are you doing getting out of this car?_

Ronan eases off the brake and lets the BMW roll gently forward.

He thinks about Adam’s rotating exhibition of bruises and scrapes.

He pulls slowly away from Adam’s house, his foot lighter on the gas than any other time in recent memory.

He thinks about his two offers to teach Adam to fight back, and anger sears his chest, hot and familiar.

He keeps his eyes on the rearview mirror as the BMW inches reluctantly down the driveway.

He thinks,  _Adam is never going to do shit about this on his own._

He watches the mirror with teeth gritted and fingers clenched around the steering wheel as Robert Parrish strikes his son, watches Adam slip, hit his head, crumple to the ground by the stairs.

He thinks,  _His father is going to kill him._

Ronan puts the BMW in reverse.


	3. The World Loved by Moonlight

Ronan laid flat on his bed, one hand splayed over the rumpled sheets. It was three a.m., and he was still awake, and Adam Parrish was asleep on the pillow next to him.

Ronan had long ago gotten used to being awake at this hour, but he hadn’t yet adjusted to Adam’s presence in his bed. It wasn’t the first time Adam had slept over, but the reality of it still urged Ronan’s mind into constant motion. Adam’s body heat warming the narrow space between them, his dusty hair brushing the pillowcase. What little light there was in the room reflecting off the delicate planes of his face. The smell of his skin and the texture of the sheets and blankets tangled around them. 

Ronan had absorbed every detail carefully. He was dead certain he could pull any of it from a dream. But he didn’t have to, because it was real already. 

He was drawing in slow, deliberate breaths, his gaze caught on the tiny hollow where Adam’s earlobe met his jawline met his neck, attempting and failing to settle his own restless movement, when he heard a rustle out in the main room beyond his door. Ronan wasn’t the only one awake.

He slid from the bed, careful not to jostle Adam, allowing his brain one more quietly delighted lap around the well-worn track of _what the fuck, what the fuck, how the fuck is this even real_. He emerged from his room and found Gansey draped over the sofa, attempting to read.

“Bad dream?” Gansey didn’t look up as he asked the question. Things had been a little tense between all of them, after the Ronan-and-Adam and Gansey-and-Blue revelations, and they hadn’t quite found their way back to normal yet.

“Nah. Couldn’t fall asleep.” Ronan didn’t take the seat next to Gansey, alighting instead on the back of the sofa. He was aware that his foot was bouncing, sending persistent tremors throughout the cushions, but his mind was still thrumming and he couldn’t shut any of it down.

Gansey was focused on the book still, ignoring Ronan and the jittering of the sofa.

“We’re out of orange juice,” Ronan pointed out. Gansey made an affirmative noise. Ronan ground his teeth a little and considered the situation.

“Wanna go for a drive?” This, finally, was enough to make Gansey put down his book. He and Ronan hadn’t been on a late-night adventure together in some time -- each too absorbed in a different kind of late-night adventure with Blue and Adam.

Gansey glanced at Ronan, but his eyes flicked almost immediately away toward Ronan’s door.

“What about…” he trailed off.

“Asleep. He’s got work in a few hours.” When Gansey hesitated, Ronan gave him a sharp grin. Just like the old Ronan would have. “Come on, old man. He’ll never know we left.”

Ronan drove. First, they hit the 24-hour convenience store to stock up on orange juice. Then, they charted a course for the Barns. Though the slightly uncomfortable silence remained, Ronan could already feel the manic energy that buzzed in his fingertips beginning to settle and abate, as though he were transferring electricity back into the car through his grip on the steering wheel.

When they reached the end of the long, twisting drive, he pulled into an empty field, and by tacit agreement both boys clambered out of the car to sprawl on the hood. They were both quiet for another long minute before Gansey finally spoke, words heavy with the weight of having been avoided for quite some time.

“How long have you known?”

The familiarity of the drive and Gansey’s company had soothed Ronan into one of the rare moods in which he was willing, pleased even, to entertain Gansey’s questions and analysis. He considered the question.

“Which part?”

“All of it, I guess.”

“I don’t know, man. It’s always been that way for me. I just didn’t spend much time thinking about it.” Ronan wasn’t sure how else to explain it, that he hadn’t been hiding anything from Gansey. That it had all been there for anyone to see. Anyone who was willing to look, anyway.

“And Adam?” 

“That was a more recent development.” 

“But you two were always at each other’s throats.”

Ronan cast an amused glance at Gansey, who flushed slightly.

“Good God, Ronan, must you always go around making everything sexual? It just always seemed like you barely tolerated one another.”

“Right, because you and Blue were all sunshine and daisies from day one.”

“Don’t be a smartass. I suppose I just didn’t expect it.”

Ronan leveled him with a steady gaze.

“It’s hard to see things coming when you're looking the other way."

Gansey let out a long sigh. Ronan wasn’t sure whether to attribute the sound to irritation or acknowledgement until Gansey spoke.

“Yes, I suppose that’s fair.” After a pause, he continued. "And you're happy? With Adam?"

Ronan just kept looking at him, without guarding his expression, and nodded. The awkwardness of the current situation didn’t erase the years they had spent as an inseparable pair. Ronan knew Gansey would understand without Ronan having to say more. Gansey nodded too, slow and pensive, grazing a thumb over his lower lip as he always did when he was thinking.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s all I care about.”

Ronan snorted. “Are you giving me your blessing?”

“Of course not. Your relationship doesn’t require my approval.”

"Damn straight,” Ronan agreed. “It's not all about you, you raging egomaniac.”

Gansey laughed, and Ronan grinned.

They were not back to the way things were before, not exactly. Maybe that would take a long time, or maybe it would always be a little different between them going forward. But this seemed like a small step in the right direction.

And when Ronan factored in the trauma of all they had been through and the fierce joy of knowing that when they returned to Monmouth he would find Adam still fast asleep in his bed -- _holy fuck, how is that even possible_ \-- that seemed more than good enough.


	4. Heart Steeped in Panic and Grace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: canon-typical description of physical abuse.

By the time the police officers were running out of questions and forms to shove at Ronan, his phone already displayed a missed call from Gansey. Only a little time had passed since the altercation in front of the Parrish doublewide, but it was still long past the time by which Ronan should have arrived back at Monmouth.

Most likely, Gansey was worrying Ronan had taken a racing-related detour on the way home. Gansey was excellent at worrying.

Ronan pressed the phone to his ear and listened as it rang, fidgeting restlessly. The surge of adrenaline from the fight still had not completely worn off. He felt alert and awake, despite the hour.

"You're gonna need to go back to the hospital," Ronan said as soon as Gansey picked up.

"Ronan, what happened? You’re at the hospital?" Gansey’s genteel tone slipped, but didn’t go away entirely. Even an emergency couldn’t kill his manners.

"No, it's Parrish. Some kind of a head injury. He's gonna be okay, but they took him to the hospital to look at it. I couldn't go with. I had to go to the police station."

" _Police station_? What in God's name have you--"

Ronan interrupted.

"Listen, I got into a fight. I'm not sorry. Don't worry, it's gonna be fine."

Gansey opened his mouth to say something, possible responses flashing through his mind. _You are not making any sense whatsoever. I thought you were just dropping Adam off. How could you possibly have managed to get in a fight when I only left you alone for a fifteen-minute drive?_

Then something clicked in Gansey's brain. _Robert Parrish._ By the time he'd arrived at this obvious answer, Ronan was talking again.

"--didn't even get clear of the driveway before that fucker was beating the shit out of him, again. I handled it, okay? What else was I supposed to do? You can't seriously tell me you'd rather I drove away and let the bastard kill him this time."

"Don’t be stupid,” Gansey said harshly. “Of course I don't want Adam hurt. But this is only going to make his situation more difficult. And Ronan, I just talked them into letting you stay at Aglionby, and that's only if you get your grades up. What do you think they'll do when they find out you've assaulted someone?"

Gansey couldn't believe it had taken Ronan so little time to sabotage this, the latest in a long series of patch-ups. He couldn't believe his nightmare of Adam finally landing in the hospital was coming true.

Ronan was silent for a moment. His tone was noticeably colder when he spoke again.

"He's pressing charges."

"Oh," Gansey said, in an entirely different tone. The situation was taking shape in his mind, implications sharpening. "That's… He won't be able to go back, then."

Ronan spat out, "And that's a bad thing?"

"Well, it's certainly not the way he wanted it to happen," Gansey said. Two images warred in his brain: Adam, finally out of his father's house, finally safe; and Adam, bitterly angry, ashamed, adrift.

"I don't care," Ronan said, defiant. "He's alive, isn't he?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. You're right," Gansey said, though an acid-sharp sick feeling had begun to gnaw at his gut. He could not entirely shake the edge of doubt from his voice.

"Just go to the hospital, Gansey. Someone's gotta pick him up, and you know he won't be able to pay the bill."

"And where are you going?"

Gansey wasn't the only one who had tracked the ramifications of tonight to their logical conclusion. Adam had pressed charges so that Ronan wouldn't get kicked out of Aglionby. If, after all this, he got thrown out for his grades anyway, that would make Ronan the very shittiest of friends. Ronan had never considered himself a particularly good person, but that seemed excessively cruel.

And that meant he had an insufferable amount of studying to do.

Ronan released his breath in a long, slow exhale.

"The library."

* * *

Ronan pulled into the parking lot at Monmouth at the same time Adam and Gansey did. His brain was buzzing with dates and facts. He wasn't done studying, not by a long shot, but he felt reasonably certain he was on track to pass their World History exam on Monday.

He parked, glancing over at the Pig as he did so. Gansey was clearly miserable, and Adam just looked blank. Checked out. They’d obviously been fighting.  

Ronan should have expected this. Adam, so judicious in designating credit or blame in matters of money, was deeply biased when it came to doing so in other arenas. It didn’t matter that Ronan had been the one to strike Adam’s father. It didn’t matter that Gansey had been miles away. By the look of things, not only had Adam settled on blame rather than credit, but he’d assigned it to Gansey instead of Ronan.

Ronan got out of the BMW, slamming the door somewhat harder than usual, and shuffled toward the Pig. Gansey was already sliding out of the driver's seat and heading for the front door as Ronan approached. Ronan let him go. Adam was slowly emerging from the passenger side, but didn’t look up.

Through the back window Ronan could see a duffel bag and backpack thrown on the backseat, and he retrieved both without a word to Adam. Silence was never a wrong answer, after all. The two followed Gansey into Monmouth and, after a brief and stilted exchange with Blue, headed for Noah's old room.

The door shut behind them as Ronan dumped the bags unceremoniously onto the bed. He was unsettled. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Not a heart-to-heart. Not gratitude. But not this either.

He scrabbled hopelessly for words to fight the heavy silence blanketing the room, but came up with nothing. It didn't much matter, because when he turned around Adam wasn't looking at him anyway.

_I'm not sorry._ His words to Gansey on the phone earlier surfaced in his mind, but he crushed them down. That was definitely not the right thing to say.

Outside, he could faintly hear the murmur of Blue and Gansey's voices. She'd said something about Malory when they walked in.

"You wanna go see what that shit's about?" Ronan's voice sounded jarring, even to his own ears, after the extended silence. His tone was all wrong and surely there was something better to have said. _Thanks for pressing charges_ , maybe. It had kept him in Aglionby and out of jail, after all, and cost Adam dearly judging by his current state. But Ronan Lynch's thank yous came around even less frequently than his apologies, no matter how well-deserved either might be. The shock would probably kill Adam outright. 

Adam glanced up, a delayed reaction to Ronan's words. His movement was slow, like it took significant effort to turn his head. Ronan wondered if it was due to emotional distress or to having his skull cracked against a railing. Adam’s eyes connected  briefly with Ronan's, then skated away.

"I think I just need a minute."

Adam spoke so quietly, it took Ronan a few seconds to figure out what he'd said. Once the words ordered themselves properly in his brain, it seemed too late to respond. 

Ronan scuffed his toe on the floor. He wondered if he should leave the room. He wondered if Adam was really that pissed about not being able to go back to his shitty parents and their shitty trailer. Whatever. He'd meant what he'd said earlier.

_ I'm not sorry. He's alive. _

Yet seeing Adam here, slumped miserably on Noah’s chair, still somehow made Ronan’s stomach churn. Not flunking out of Aglionby seemed insufficient all of a sudden. It wasn't enough to not fuck up Adam's sacrifice of pressing charges.

But what else was there? Adam didn't exactly welcome help, and Ronan wasn't big on grand gestures or random acts of kindness.

Adam certainly seemed to hate the idea of living at Monmouth with them. Maybe that was something Ronan could fix. His mind picked absently at the problem. The real challenge was not simply to find a solution, but to find a solution that Adam wouldn't reject, and present it in a way that made it seem less like a favor and more like happenstance.

Ronan had begun to spin a thread of an idea -- it involved negotiating with the nuns at St. Agnes, fabricating a room-for-rent flyer, and tossing it indifferently at Parrish along with a snide remark -- when Adam stood up few moments later.

“Okay,” he said simply, holding Ronan’s gaze for only a moment before he moved toward the door. There was no accusation in his tone or gesture.

No, Adam did not blame him at all. Ronan wondered why, then, he still felt like shit. 


	5. Mule Heart

Adam hadn’t been sure, at first, what life after Gansey would look like.

It was remarkable how quickly Adam’s hesitance had given way that first morning, when Gansey loaded his bike in the back of the Camaro and they’d driven to school together. Gansey had a special talent for putting people at ease, and his good-natured charm and delight in sharing his quest worked on Adam as well as anyone else.

It wasn’t until they arrived at school and parted ways with a promise to meet up at lunch so that Gansey could continue Adam’s education in all things Glendower that the anxiety resurfaced. Specifically, until Ronan Lynch walked into the second period calculus class they shared.

Tall, dark, and fearsome as usual, Ronan didn’t spare a glance at Adam. This was nothing unusual, as Ronan had never done so previously. Adam would think Ronan had not deigned to notice him, if it weren’t for the fact that Adam was his closest challenger for head of class in Latin. Ronan still outstripped him, and had never directed anything other than his usual expression of bored disdain toward Adam.

Seeing Ronan today forced Adam’s tentative connection with Gansey back into context, and he wondered what Ronan would think of Adam joining their lunch table. There were always other students drifting by, of course, to slap Gansey on the back and exchange a few jovial good-ol’-boy nudges and winks, but Ronan kept them moving right along with his imposing presence and stinging gaze.

Anyone could see that he was Gansey’s right hand, and that he didn’t lightly tolerate intruders. In fact, Adam couldn’t remember seeing Ronan willingly interact with any Aglionby students other than Gansey, except for one exuberant, stocky blond boy who Adam thought might be his brother.

So a few hours later when Adam arrived to meet them, it was far from unexpected for Ronan to eye him derisively and make a casually cutting remark.

"Shit, Gansey, I didn’t realize it was Bring Your Charity Case to Work Day."

At Gansey’s sharp rebuke, Ronan rearranged his features into a look that was clearly supposed to be contrition, but somehow managed to communicate just as much contempt as his words.

"As you can see, Ronan’s manners are somewhat lacking," Gansey’d said, in what had to be the most tactful possible description of Ronan’s social failings.

"Just ignore him," Gansey had further advised, then launched easily back into their conversation from earlier in the day. But Ronan was hard to ignore. Even unmoving and mute, with an expression of haughty indifference affixed firmly to his face, Ronan transmitted relentless waves of distrust and antagonism.

Despite this, they somehow made it through lunch with no further flare-ups, and Adam left school that day with a standing invitation to the boys’ apartment and the distinct feeling that things at Aglionby might be looking up. He did his best to crush the latter, as was his custom with almost all hopeful thoughts. He’d learned from experience this was the only way to avoid having them crushed for him later on by the world at large.

He did, however, allow himself a small ration of pleasant surprise. Somehow, his cautious overture of friendship hadn’t entirely blown up in his face.

But the real shock came the next day when Ronan Lynch slunk into second period, jerked his head at Adam in a brief nod, and dropped into the seat next to him instead of continuing on to the back corner of the classroom he usually inhabited.

This was unexpected, not to mention unsettling. Adam wondered if it was really this easy for Ronan to adopt whatever course Gansey might set. For someone so outwardly fierce-looking, Lynch was absurdly obedient.

For the duration of class, Adam could feel Ronan’s restless presence beside him just as keenly as he had at lunch the day before, though Ronan didn’t say a single word or even glance in Adam’s direction as the hour passed. By the end of the period, Adam was half-convinced Ronan’s seat choice was some sort of bizarre coincidence.

But when the bell rang, Ronan lingered in his seat despite the fact that his desk was insolently free of any note-taking materials to put away. Then, as Adam moved to put away the notebook in which he’d painstakingly transcribed the lecture, Ronan stood, stretching his arms with careless grace, and turned toward him.

“Jesus, Parrish, are you coming to Latin or what? Does everyone in the trailer park move this slow?”

Oddly, it was the insult that put Adam back at ease. 

“Fuck you,” he said, firmly but without excessive heat, and volleyed a passable imitation of Ronan’s trademark glare back at him. Ronan responded with a mordant grin.

“I knew you had it in you, Parrish,” he said, voice bright with sarcasm. Adam couldn’t tell if the remark was approving, or mocking, or both. Before he had time to decide, Ronan had already turned away again and started for the door.

Adam scoffed, shook his head slightly. But he followed Ronan out of the classroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "This will be a short one," I say to myself. "Much shorter than the others." 
> 
> (It ends up at 800+ words.)
> 
> (Rinse and repeat.)


	6. Changing Everything

_I fucked it up. I fucked it up._

Ronan stayed in the BMW for a long time without moving. He could feel his arteries throbbing, forcing blood through his body. His fingers ached with the pound of his pulse.

_**I fucked it up.** _

Only, how was that even possible? It was Adam, not Ronan, who had said _we could…_ and then trailed off, the timbre of his voice lower than usual. Adam who had leaned across the center console. Adam who had initiated the kiss.

What was more, Ronan couldn’t put his finger on the point at which it had gone so badly wrong. The memory was already receding in his mind. It was like his dreams felt: the moment itself in sharp focus, the how of getting there fuzzy and impossible to recall.

In one moment, he had Adam’s lips pressing against his mouth and Adam’s cheek smooth under his hand and Adam’s pulse tapping at his fingers. In the next, he had empty space pressing at every inch of his skin and Adam lancing him with an indecipherable expression and sick misery rising inside him.

For just a moment, Ronan entertained the idea of finding Gansey and confessing. Of calling Matthew. Of returning to Cabeswater and his mother.  

But he could already feel the adrenaline working through his system, converting anguish into aimless anger. It had become such a familiar feeling. He left his phone tucked in the door pocket and restarted the car.

It took a few hours of abusing the BMW’s transmission for Ronan to feel grounded enough to return to Monmouth. He threw the door open with a bang as he entered, and closed it behind him with another. Gansey goggled up at him from behind a stack of books, but Ronan headed directly for his room without a word. He slammed that door too, for good measure.

“Ronan?” This he heard faintly through the closed door. Instead of responding, he turned on the stereo and selected the techno playlist he knew Gansey found most abhorrent. The message would be as clear to Gansey as if Ronan had actually said _leave me the fuck alone_.

Ronan wasn’t sure how much time had passed when his door cracked open to reveal a sliver of Adam’s face. Though the apparition sent another jolt of anxiety through him, Ronan kept his face blank. He hated that Adam had caught him sitting hunched over on the bed, but to change position now would only look more pathetic. Ronan Lynch didn’t do pathetic.

Through the gap in the door, Adam’s uncertain expression, brows tipped apologetically, requested entrance without his saying a word.

"Parrish," Ronan said coldly, loud enough to be heard over the music. It was a world different from a few hours ago, when he’d said, _Adam_. "Didn’t your shitty parents teach you any manners? You’re supposed to fucking knock.”

Adam rolled his eyes, but slipped inside the small room anyway. He shut the door behind him but didn’t move any closer to Ronan, hovering awkwardly by the threshold instead.

"What do you want?" Ronan kept his tone brusque and his eyes averted.

"I just wanted to say -- I shouldn’t have walked away, earlier." The statement had the feel of an apology, though it lacked the vocabulary of one.

Ronan still didn’t look at Adam, though Adam’s gaze crackled on his skin. Adam pressed on.

"I didn’t think you would --  I didn’t know --" He paused, considering.

Ronan scoffed, a sharp venomous sound.

“As _if_ , Parrish.”

“No, seriously. I didn’t.”

“Bullshit. We both know you aren’t that stupid,” Ronan argued. His face remained impassive, but his tone was low and harsh. He infused it with as much anger as he could manage, but it ended up somewhere in the neighborhood of hurt against his will. 

“What exactly was supposed to tip me off? Whatever creepy thing you had going with Kavinsky?” Adam was angry now, too, and this seemed to be enough to make him forget his decision to linger by the door. As he spoke, he closed in on Ronan, who adamantly refused to flinch.

“Fuck off.”

“No, really, Ronan. Tell me what, exactly, was supposed to have clued me in. What was supposed to make me think you’d… react like that?” The last part came out halting, Adam’s discomfort with the discussion winning out over his irritation.

“Oh, right, because I’ve never done _shit_ for you. Sorry, I forgot.” Ronan’s sarcasm was reaching lethal levels. He hoped it was enough to kill the conversation. He wanted Adam to walk away again. He didn't want to have to look at him. 

It did not have the desired effect. Instead, Adam sighed, weary. Relenting. 

He dropped onto the bed next to Ronan.

"The rent," Adam said. It was a question.

"The rent," Ronan agreed, voice subdued.

He offered no further explanation, and Adam shook his head as though expecting it to rattle his thoughts into order.

"Can’t we just…” He lapsed into silence again after only a few words, clearly lacking a suitable proposal.

"What, pretend it didn’t happen?" Ronan suggested scathingly. Adam made a frustrated noise and shoved at Ronan’s shoulder with his own.

"No," he said, his accent drawing the vowel out long. "I don’t know."

They sat in silence for a very long time. The mattress dipped in between them, pressing them together at shoulders, at elbows, at hips.

"I’m so damn tired," Adam said finally. Ronan said nothing. He was focused on the heat of each point of contact between them. He could feel Adam’s ribcage move when he breathed.  

Then, slowly, so slowly that the change was almost imperceptible, Adam tilted his head to the side, allowing it to come to rest on the top of Ronan’s shoulder. His hair fell against the crook of Ronan’s collarbone.

This was a question, too, asked just as hesitantly as the one about the rent.

Ronan didn’t say, _what are you doing, Adam?_

He didn’t say, _what do you want from me, Adam?_

He didn’t ask the questions, because he knew Adam wouldn’t have answers anyway.

He didn’t say a word, because it was impossible that any answers Adam did have would be what Ronan wanted them to be.

He just exhaled, the sound harsh but resigned. All the fight went out of him with the air.

He let his head fall against Adam’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. I tripped over my keyboard and this somehow happened. In my own defense, let me say that some of these scenarios are hills I'm willing to die on (chapter four) while others are the written equivalent of spitballing (this one). Also, there is a part one to this, but I'm posting out of order because... yep.


	7. Late Prayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: implied physical abuse, discussion of suicide.

It was 2:30 am when the phone rang at the Parrish house. Luckily for Adam, the phone in question was a corded model so old that the ring had gone soft and tinny, and it sat on a small table in the hall just outside his room. It was almost never loud enough to wake his parents where they slept down the hall, as long as he reached it within the first couple of rings.

Adam, awakened from a light and fitful sleep, had thrown himself from bed and picked up the phone just as it began its third ring.

“Hello?” He kept his voice quiet as possible, darting a glance toward the closed door at the end of the hall.

“Adam.” Gansey sounded ruined. “It’s me.”

“Gansey, you know it’s a bad idea to call--” Adam started to say, his voice a low murmur in the silent hall, then paused as Gansey’s tone infiltrated his panicked mind. “What’s wrong?”

He listened as Gansey described in broken sentences how they’d realized Ronan wasn’t in his bed and set out looking for him, how Noah had found him by the Aglionby gate unconscious and painted with his own blood, how his wrists -- his entire forearms -- had been slashed to ribbons, how the doctors were stitching him up now, how he was having trouble getting ahold of Matthew and Declan. How no one at the hospital would say anything other than _we’ll let you know as soon as we have more information_.

Finally, after Gansey had trailed off into a desperate, pleading silence, Adam spoke.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

His hand was turning the knob of the front door when he heard creaking footsteps. He looked up to see Robert Parrish emerging from the bedroom.

This was how Adam came to spend the hours after Ronan's suicide attempt lying in bed at home, praying that his arm was only bruised and not broken and wondering vaguely whether Ronan was still alive. He couldn’t risk another phone call. Gansey’s words echoed endlessly in his head.

_Lost so much blood they won’t tell me anything don’t know what he used just lying there in a puddle of blood jesus adam so many cuts won’t say if they think he’ll pull through god how could he possibly have carved up his own skin like that noah said he’s never seen so much blood in his life don’t understand why he would do that to himself no idea what’s happening back there can’t stop thinking what if what if what if_

His only defense was this, the ceaseless Adam Parrish refrain: _It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It will be fine. It has to be fine._

In the morning, at the time Gansey always came by to pick him up for school, Adam peeled himself from the bed, careful not to jostle his still-aching arm. He slipped quietly out of the house to find the Pig waiting at the end of the gravel road. Adam craned his neck as he hurried toward the car, trying to get a look at Gansey’s face, to judge Ronan’s fate based on his expression.

The glimpse he caught was: bloodshot eyes, ashen complexion, the worry-wrinkle Gansey occasionally developed digging deeply into his forehead. Miserable, but not nearly miserable enough to mean Ronan hadn’t made it through the night. Adam blew out a breath. _It's fine._

Gansey looked up as Adam opened the passenger door, spared a glance at Adam’s long-sleeved shirt as he slid into the car. Despite the fact that it was October, an unseasonable heat wave had swept into Henrietta earlier in the week and it was already clear the day would be too hot for long sleeves.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” Gansey said, his voice subdued. “When you didn’t show up, I thought you might have… been intercepted. Perhaps I shouldn’t have called, I just -- I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Gansey, I’m okay. It’s fine.” Gansey looked skeptical. The mantra didn’t work as well on him as it did on Adam. It never had. Adam changed tacks. “How is he?”

“He’s been out of surgery and sleeping for a few hours. Matthew and Declan are there now, but I can’t leave him with them. Matthew’s a mess. Declan’s angry, of course. As though Ronan did it specifically to piss him off.”

And maybe he had. Adam couldn’t quite reconcile this development, the development of Ronan slicing open his own veins and waiting to bleed out, with the sharp and angry boy he knew. Ronan was not happy -- that was obvious -- but he had always seemed in much greater danger of cutting someone else than himself.

The Lynch brothers had already lost their father to death and their mother to oblivion. Adam wondered which Ronan had been trying to achieve.

Gansey was still talking, relaying in full the latest conversation he’d had with Ronan’s doctor. As he spoke, Adam picked up a brochure from the floor of the car ("Attempted Suicide: A Resource for Families") and skimmed it. He flipped to a panel listing things to avoid asking.

_How could you do this to me?_

_What were you thinking?_

_What made you decide to do it?_

Adam glanced up at Gansey, thinking that the list was probably a fairly complete inventory of the questions eating away at him. Gansey didn’t say anything about the brochure, but his jaw tensed a little. Adam re-folded it and dropped it back on the floor.

When they arrived at the hospital, Ronan was awake but hadn’t yet shaken off the haze of morphine. Though there was no love lost between them and though he’d already known Ronan was going to be okay, the sight of him propped up in the hospital bed, awake and very much alive, felt strangely like a reprieve. An affirmation of Adam's refrain. _It’s fine, it’s fine._

Adam settled himself awkwardly into one of the flimsy plastic chairs, while Gansey ushered Matthew and Declan out to get some food and rest.

Adam glanced at Ronan and found him looking back. His eyes were surprisingly alert, though his face was somewhat slack. This, Adam realized, was Ronan’s standard-issue piercing look, only it was dialed back about ten notches by the painkillers and sedatives he’d been given.

With drug-clumsy fingers, Ronan tapped lightly at the bandages swathing his forearms and nodded vaguely in Adam’s direction.

“That’s cute, man, we match,” he croaked. “Isn’t it, like, eighty degrees out there?” It was almost impressive, really, how much sarcasm his languid voice managed to hold.

Typical. Ronan could have been on his deathbed and he’d still find some way to land a jab at Adam. It was incredible how fast he could sour any sympathy Adam might have mustered. Adam looked evenly at him, crushing the impulse to tug the long sleeves of his t-shirt further down his wrists.

“It’s fine,” he said again.

This was his invocation, the lie to be recited over and over again, silently and aloud, to be prayed without ceasing until it became the truth.

_It's fine._


	8. A Month of Days and Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: discussion of suicide.

“It isn’t like that.”

It didn’t matter how many times Ronan said it. It soothed no one, and no one but him believed it.

For the first few days after Ronan was released from the hospital, Gansey had buzzed erratically around Monmouth in random lines and loops, like a fly having a seizure. If Ronan thought about it, it was shocking that there was such thing as a crisis severe enough to put a dent in Gansey’s otherwise flawless facade. He tried not to think about it, though, because that was always when the guilt set in.

Every time he glimpsed an edge of the misery behind Gansey’s mask of control, Ronan felt the secret he shared with his father welling up at the back of his throat and had to swallow hard to keep it inside. It was a ceaseless struggle. _Tell Gansey? Don’t tell him. Don’t tell him, don’t tell him, don’t fucking tell him._ Ronan could tell the fear was eating Gansey alive, but it had consumed him too and there was no solution. He was afraid to speak the truth, and afraid to continue concealing it. He was afraid to continue existing, treacherous creature that he was, and afraid to do anything to stop.

Both boys were all raw nerves, and they found it shockingly easy to wound one another without even trying. Their first fight happened the night Ronan came home from the hospital, and started with Gansey brandishing two little orange bottles labeled with Ronan’s name at him. The doctor had prescribed him an antidepressant and a sleep aid, and Gansey was now trying to convince Ronan that taking them was a requirement, not a suggestion.   
  
“Ronan, the doctor says we have to get you back on a regular sleep schedule. The insomnia is incredibly detrimental to your overall health. At least take this one, for tonight.” He proffered the bottle containing the sleeping pill.

“No,” Ronan replied curtly. “Fuck no.”

It was bad enough as it was, bad enough to wake up and be unable to move. Ronan couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be trapped in sleep, at the mercy of his dark and shifting dreams. They could move from innocuous, to disturbing, to dangerous in only seconds.

“Ronan, you have to take them.” Gansey was becoming more and more exasperated.

“I don’t have to do shit,” Ronan said. Then, seeing the expression on Gansey’s face, he added, “They won’t help. They’ll make things worse.”

“You’re not being rational. How will they make it worse?”

“Listen, just…” Ronan clenched his fists. He had no idea how to explain himself without breaking his promise to his father. “Do you want me to get better?”

Gansey flinched as though he’d been struck.

“Is that a threat?”

“ _No_. Jesus, Gansey. I already told you, it won’t happen again. You know I don’t lie.”

But the damage had been done. Ronan could see the hurt in Gansey’s eyes. His own irritation was gone. The guilt was back. He relented.

“Shit, fine. I’ll take the other ones. Just not those. Okay?”

This was the first in a series of uneasy compromises. It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. Ronan did try, at first. The little blue pills took the edge off his anger, settled his volatile mood somewhat. But they did very little for the despair and fear that ate away at his insides. So he took them less and less frequently as the days went on, and tried not to notice Gansey noticing the still-full bottle.

By some agreement unspoken to Ronan, the others had set up regular shifts at Monmouth covering all hours of the day and night. This was one on a list of many unusual things he was apparently not supposed to find unusual, a list which also included the sudden disappearance of all sharp objects, alcohol and pills from the loft. To Ronan, the childproofing felt like a bridge too far. At least the babysitting was close to their pre-hospitalization rhythms that it felt only a little unnatural.

Everyone had a shift on the Ronan Lynch Suicide Watch Brigade, except for Declan and Noah. Declan, for obvious reasons, was not considered a calming influence. Gansey didn’t assign him a shift, and he didn’t push for one.

Noah appeared to have earned his discharge by finding Ronan in the first place. He wasn’t around as much as before, and even when he did materialize, he seemed a little distant. Traumatized, maybe. Ronan knew how bad it must have looked when Noah found him. The image of a tire iron encrusted with blood wasn’t far off in his memory, and remorse continued to wage war on his viscera.

The afternoon shift, beginning directly after classes ended, belonged to Matthew. He spent every minute of it hovering, sitting just a little too close, oozing desperate love. His gaze felt like hot little hands on Ronan’s neck. Ronan could hardly stand it.

He did his best to grudgingly accept his little brother’s affection, but occasionally a flinch or sharp comment slipped out. It didn’t matter, though. Matthew was a puppy that wouldn’t stop climbing into your lap no matter how many times you pushed him off.

When Matthew left for dinner with his friends, replaced neatly by Adam arriving fresh off a few hours at the repair shop, smudged with grease and smelling like gasoline, Ronan thought he understood what it might feel like to get the first good lungful of air after an asthma attack.

For some reason -- maybe because he knew full well that Adam was there only out of a sense of duty -- this was the only time of day Ronan did not spend alternating wildly between guilt over how worried they all were, and resentment that he couldn’t explain what had really happened. During Adam’s shift, the burden of Ronan’s promise to his father still felt heavy, but in a way that was bearable instead of in a way that threatened to crush him.

Ronan knew Adam's presence was perfunctory because he'd overheard Gansey and Adam arguing in low voices on one of the first nights after he’d been released from the hospital. The others still hadn't figured out that the acoustics of Monmouth made it easy for Ronan to listen in on snatches of conversations held in the main room, even through his closed door. _You know this is all pointless, right? When are you gonna learn you can’t make Ronan do anything he doesn’t want to do? … Fine. Fine. Don’t put this on me. I’m here with him just as much as you and Matthew. What else do you want from me?_

Still, compared to Gansey’s inability to look him in the eye and Noah’s moping and Matthew’s suffocating love, Adam’s quiet presence was a mercy. Even better, he could usually be talked into whatever new kind of trouble Ronan had invented. He protested to begin with, of course. Adam was a perpetual doubter, always undercutting Ronan’s latest flight of fancy with questions that started with _why_ and _how_.

His protests rarely held much conviction, though. Ronan suspected that here, too, Adam was just going through the motions. If he registered his disapproval early on, then later, once things had gone south, he could say to Gansey, _I told him it was a bad idea_.

So they practiced stunts in the BMW that fell into the category of “do not try this at home” and took matches to things that really shouldn’t be set on fire and one day, they pried open a second floor window in order to climb up on the roof.

“This is a bad idea,” Adam said, watching Ronan's legs dangle in the window as he contorted to reach the gutter and began to hoist himself up.

“Yeah, yeah. Are you coming or what?”

Adam didn't respond immediately, but he did lean out the window to watch Ronan’s progress.

“Remind me why we're climbing on the roof?”

As he swung a leg up onto the corrugated metal, Ronan pondered why Adam always ended up going along with his terrible ideas. Did he recognize the futility of fighting a rip current? Or was it secretly a relief to set aside the responsibility he’d already carried for years, and behave like a dumbass teenager for once?

Either way, and despite the fact that Adam was still mostly inside the window and once again asking _why_ , Ronan was pretty sure he was coming along.

“Because we fucking feel like it,” Ronan said. Then, he added, “Also, when Gansey gets home we're gonna throw shit at him.”

“Great,” Adam said dryly. But he stepped onto the windowsill and accepted the hand Ronan extended anyway, just as Ronan had predicted.

Adam’s shift didn’t always mean getting into trouble. Some evenings, they ordered pizza with Ronan’s credit card and worked through Latin and calculus homework in silence. Some evenings, Ronan dragged speakers out of his room and put on music, an ordeal which Adam suffered nobly through.

But every night when Gansey arrived home from practice, the reprieve ended and Ronan’s guilt-resentment cycle began anew. As the weeks wore on, their arguments continued.

The day after Ronan sketched long black tire marks in every direction across the Monmouth parking lot, he discovered Gansey had squirreled away the keys to the BMW without telling him. When Ronan confronted him, their exchange was brief and terse.

"How do I know you won’t do anything illegal?"

"You don’t."

"Will you promise me you won’t?"

"You know I don’t make promises like that.”

“Like what?”

Ronan leveled Gansey with an even gaze.

“Ones I can’t keep.”

Gansey gave him the keys anyway. The victory was only barely worth the look of defeat on his face when he did so.

It wasn’t their last disagreement. They fought over Ronan’s aversion to attending counseling sessions, over the six pack of beer that Ronan bought and stored unabashedly in the middle of the fridge, over Ronan’s tendency to go walking at night while Gansey slept, and over Gansey’s discovery that Ronan had promptly resumed skipping any classes he didn’t share with Adam or Gansey. (Ronan had rightly reasoned that skipping classes Gansey was in would only send him around the bend again, and that skipping classes Adam was in would only cause Adam to go straight to Gansey anyway.)

He’d only done it because the rumors that had spread about his absence made attending class even more unbearable than it had been previously. The whispers and curious stares from the faculty and staff, who acted like they hadn’t been looking if he caught them, and classmates, who didn’t bother to pretend, made his skin itch. He’d even caught notorious troublemaker Joseph Kavinsky eyeing him keenly from the other side of the center green. All the glares Ronan was capable of leveraging were barely enough to staunch the attention. He hated it.  

The day Gansey caught him skipping out at the end of Latin, after they’d ajourned another tense standoff so Gansey could make it to crew practice, was the one time Ronan and Adam came close to acknowledging the reason Ronan required 24/7 supervision.

They stumbled on the conversation almost by accident, while Adam sprawled on the floor with homework and Ronan paced the room with an illicit beer in hand. He’d quietly weathered Gansey’s lecture earlier, yet again racked by shame, but now he was on an upswing toward indignation and gaining steam.

Adam was making a point of ignoring him, but when Ronan flippantly referred to Gansey as  _Nurse fucking Ratched_ , he finally took the bait.

Rolling his eyes, he asked, “You realize in that analogy, you’re crazy, right? Like, locked-in-a-mental-hospital crazy.”

Ronan scoffed.

“Yeah, Parrish, I should be in a mental hospital.” He infused his voice with enough derision to disguise the small, but sharp twinge he’d experienced at the words. _I’m not insane. I’m not fucking suicidal. Fuck this._

“It’s your analogy, not mine. Should I be concerned you’re gonna snap and try to strangle him?”

“Probably,” Ronan muttered. “At least Noah will smother me after the lobotomy."

Adam laughed, just once, but the smile on his face was quickly overtaken by a serious expression.  

“You don't have to be such a dick about it. You know he’s just worried about you.”

Ronan felt his chest constrict. Not this again. Not Adam, too.

“I’m fucking fine.” His tone indicated that the topic was closed for discussion, but he could see the disbelief on Adam’s face. Could almost hear Adam launching in, Gansey’s words emerging from his mouth. _Seriously? You’re gonna keep pretending it didn’t happen? You were in the hospital for hours, Ronan. Hours. We didn’t know if you’d pull through. Do you have any idea--_

He watched Adam swallow the questions, watched him set aside his incredulity with a little shake of his head, and suddenly Ronan’s lungs were once again capable of accepting oxygen.

The subject didn’t come up again.


End file.
